OK (but borderline hateful) kit lens

jwilliams wrote:

julyas43 wrote:

Gotta be realistic on expectations of a lens in this price range.

(+) affordable, compact, feels nice to touch and operate, image stabilization is included (and very effective too), fast & silent focusing despite using STM, focus by wire is effective & predictable (still doesn't feel as good as full time MF tho), and includes basic RF lens capabilities like control ring, 1/8th aperture increment for video

Yeah.

(-) terrible wide angle image quality, the aperture stopping down too much for only 4.4x zoom level, only has one electronic ring for either control or focus, no dedicated AF/MF switch, have I said way too dark maximum aperture at the long end zoom?

24mm could be better, but everything else is irrelevant or simply the laws of physics at work.

One thing angers me the most is the 24-240mm superzoom "only" looses 4/3rd stops of aperture compared to this which is 5/3rd, while only (barely) zoom 5x instead of 10. Surely they could've made this only looses 1 stop of aperture if they don't cheap out too much, and leave the stupid & difficult-to-use macro thing.

It's also a much larger and heavier lens. The 24-105 is a much handier size for a walk around lens.

When I say terrible wide angle IQ, just look at the lens correction menu, you can't turn off the lens distortion correction. So shoot RAW, open the file in Lightroom, turn the lens distortion correction off, boom, disappointment. It's almost like as if they took some elements from a 10mm fish eye lens, put it in front of this lens, and forcefully ask the camera processor to crop & stretch to "compensate". On the same note actually the RF 16mm f/2.8 and RF 24-240mm f/4-6.3 has the same issue

While probably not realistic, I'd like to see 2 levels of distortion correction available for lenses like this. Allow me to leave some of it in on JPGs in exchange for better edges/corners. In reality those who are overly concerned with such a thing can do manual correction on RAW files so you're not forced to live with Canons corrections if you really don't want to.

With all that being said, it is pretty affordable for the zoom level it offers, giving quite a big opportunity for people just came into the full frame market such as the RP itself. I somewhat think of this lens as the EF-S 18-55mm we all know and love(?) that's been the bog standard kit lens for the APS-C Canon DSLRs throughout the years. Yes the 18-55 is cheaply made and left a lot to be desired, but after some generations it makes such a perfect sense, it offers an okay zoom range (the 24-105 has even more obv), produce good enough image for the sensor, and most importantly, affordable.

I can actually see what's happening in Canon R&D after the burst of RF lenses in 2020. They pushed out a lot of non-L lenses with either a cheap and dirty development from scratch (this, the 24-240, the 16, the 100-400, 600 & 800 f/11) and see what sticks, or just copy an older design (the 35 macro, nifty fifty) that's been proven good but not much improvements. Some of the new designs are actually good, especially the tele lenses. I kinda hope this means more affordable EOS R cameras (probably even APS-C), and they're over with this cheap & dirty method.

If Canon had only let the zooming ring go out to 28mm or so I think people would be praising this lens (except for inevitably complaining it only went to 28mm on the wide end).

What Canon really needs is a UWA mate to this lens. Something like a 16-35 4-7.1. You may end up facing the same issue at 16mm but you'll greatly expand the wide angle capabilities of amateurs without deep pockets. Right now the cheapest UWA zoom from Canon is the 14-35 4L IS. They need something more affordable in that range.

Scaled up EF-M 11-22 with the image quality intact would be splendid.

Or just get M6 mk II.

If Canon just made an inexpensive 20-35 UWA it would probably perform very well over that range.

Seems today every standard zoom has to go to 24 and every UWA zoom has to go to 16. I guess that's just satisfying the marketing people vs giving photographers what they really need.